Secrets of Fascia Masterclass [VIDEO] + Kinetix Technique Tutorial
What can fascia teach us about our potential for regeneration, healing and freedom? Why doesn't fascia bend to our will? What can fascia teach us about our spiritual nature?
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Dear friends,
So many of us are enamored with fascia.
Why?
After all, it’s just “material” stuff that we carry around inside our bodies. Right?
Well, yes.
And…no.
Fascia is a shapeshifter. It’s slippery, and hard to pin down - literally (and metaphorically). And just when you think you’ve got it figured out, it surprises you yet again!
Here’s a question, and the answer to this question is something that I’m guessing will surprise a lot of you:
What population of people would you guess have the most fascial adhesions (knots or hard balls of tissue)?
Martial artists? Mothers? Type A workaholics? Athletes? Lazy people? Yogis? Runners? Bikers?
And…what population of people would you guess have the healthiest fascia?
I’ll answer both questions in a moment.
If you’re new here, you might be wondering what the heck fascia is. While I do describe what fascia is in the video masterclass below, I think it’s useful to put it in writing here:
Fascia is the most abundant tissue in the body. We are literally created out of fascia: in our mother’s womb, our body begins to build itself out of a fascial gel matrix when we are tiny embryos! As adult humans, fascia wraps every nerve ending, ever fibril and fiber of muscle tissue; it wraps our blood vessels, bones and our organs; and the superficial fascia houses the entire lymph system. Fascia can be mostly water, or a liquid gel, or it can form as dense collagen-rich tendon and ligament.
But fascia, in my opinion, cannot be boiled down to its chemical makeup. It’s an entire ecosystem unto itself and it has direct relationships with the external world, and the cosmos.
If we want to understand fascia, we have to study its nature. Which means we need to study it in motion. Which is really hard to do! We also need to study it when it is under duress; when it goes into protect mode; when it senses safety; when it is unhealthy; and when it is healthy. And then we need to map all that data onto the human being who owns the body.
When you do this with enough people, you start to see patterns.
I’ve spent the last 16 years working with fascia in the most tactile, visceral way I know - through partner fascia release that emphasizes compression and shearing of fascial fibers, dense layers and/or “knots” (adhesions).
Movement is generated by the person being stepped on (the fascia and muscles it wraps have to initiate movement), and then the person I am stepping on has to move all of their tissues that are under 30-150 lbs of weight while I am giving them enough resistance to create a shear effect.
Like this:
Too much stretching, which is pictured on the top left, could cause tensional stress (tearing or rupturing). Too much compression without shearing could cause mechanical or compressional stress (damage), as depicted top right.
Fascia will densify and thicken with too much compressional stress as a protective measure against impact trauma.
Conversely, fascia will form hard balls (adhesions, knots) to protect you from tensional stress, or rupture damage.
Compression and shearing creates a piezoelectric charge and harnesses the 5 kinetic energies of the planet and human body: 1) mechanical, 2) thermal, 3) radiant, 4) sound and 5) magnetism.
Compression and shearing of water molecules (which are mostly stored in fascia, inside the extracellular matrix - the body’s water well) creates structured water (a gel), while compression and shearing of fascia has been shown to produce hyaluronic acid, which we need to absorb the water we drink.
Want to try it?
So - which population of people have the most adhesions in their fascial system?
Yogis.
Hyper-mobile people.
People who stretch a lot.
Does the above surprise you?
I was a gymnast as a child, and I started doing yoga when I was 17…and I seriously messed myself up with all that stretching, creating an injury prone body because of 1) the hypermobility that resulted, and 2) the giant balls of fascia that formed to protect me against overstretching.
Giant balls of fascia can strangle blood vessels and cause poor blood circulation, they can trap nerves and cause pelvic instability and joint pain…
I’m not “anti” yoga by the way. I still do yoga sometimes. I am anti static stretching, and I am not a fan of yanking on tissues in an attempt to make them longer. There are better ways to take care of our fascia.
Now…
Which population of people have the healthiest fascia?
This is one of the most important lessons that fascia has taught me:
People who like their life have the healthiest fascia.
People who are in the right relationship, the right career, who are content and satisfied with what they have and who they are. They do not have the kind of internal tension caused by self betrayal, living a lie, or longing for a life different from the one they are living.
People who are in integrity with themselves have the healthiest fascia and their fascia regenerates rapidly.
These are just some of the patterns I noticed working with over 5,000 unique people in Boulder, Colorado from 2011 to 2018.
With that, I present to you….
Want to watch more classes like this?
Want to download the slides from this class?
Join the free membership tier of the School for Living Science. Since we opened it last week, we’ve had over 430 people join from all over the world! 🌏 🤗
I’m hosting a “State of the Union” Zoom call at 10AM PST tomorrow (Tuesday, June 4th), to address the chronic pain and health epidemics from a place of curiosity. We will ask, and attempt to answer - together - these three questions:
▶ What is all this pain and disease trying to teach us?
▶ What is the role and responsibility of practitioners today?
▶ What is the role and responsibility of individuals?
You can attend live and participate in the Q&A after by joining the free membership.
And finally…the School is opening for enrollment TOMORROW, Tuesday June 4th 🥳
So if you want to take a deep dive into human nature, or fascia, or the nervous system, or Kinetix…you’ll be able to join me on the quest to see possibility where most people see obstacles, and to discover remedies - physical and spiritual - in the very pain and diseases we’re trying to eliminate. Because it is in the pain that the solutions and the wisdom will be found.
I’m glad you’re here with me.